An attempt in progress to compile the most universal movies of all time, the creamiest of the crop, the most rewarding and eternal.
Sharing your assent or dissent, as well as any pertinent info, will be greatly appreciated and cited. The goal is not to make you admire this list. It's to get more people making this kind of list for themselves.

In so many ways, this is the perfect movie for our times. It's fun, colorful, smart, it's got a great soundtrack, the leading lady is spilling with charm, it's got a racially and sexually even-handed cast, and the story is ethically righteous. It's strange to think that this came from the same mind that gave us "Desperate Living" (1977)! It's delicious for the way the soundtrack is cut to the image flow, and for its great overarching spirit of the underdog triumphant. Ricki Lake will lift your spirits and add a skip to your step.

Camille Claudel

Directed by Bruno Nuytten
Written by Bruno Nuytten and Marilyn Goldin
Produced by Bernard Artigues

Music by Gabriel Yared
Cinematography by Pierre Lhomme
Editing by Joëlle Hache and Jeanne Kef
Production design by Bernard Vézat
Costumes by Dominique Borg

Starring Isabelle Adjani and Gérard Depardieu

Passionate biography of sculptor who studied under Rodin, collaborated with him, and may have surpassed his artistry. Adjani is brilliant in the title role. You can admire her as a martyr of the arts, you can criticize her as a needy bitch, or you can appreciate the total commitment to the realistic role, and accept that you want to believe that this is what Camille Claudel was like. The pace, though elegiac, still holds riveted interest through its supreme score, cinematography, and editing. And yes, of course, the director is loaded with immeasurable vision. Depardieu is fun to watch, as well.

So graceful, meditative, every scene, the way it all fits together like a delicate puzzle. It's the puzzle of a woman's life, put together through photographs, memories, dreams, theater, and conversation. It's not really sad, it's more accurate to describe it as blue. The actors alone are reason to watch as they are an intensely amazing cast. The cinematography is crisp, chilly, with the burnt red hues of autumn. It's a dreamy and subtle masterpiece about coming to know one's self. The strongest and most magical thing about it is that it makes you reflect on your own life and relationships, and you start to wonder if you are a little like the protagonist.

Thelonious Monk: Straight, No Chaser

Directed by Charlotte Zwerin
Starring Thelonious Monk

A unique documentary for a unique human being. There has never been a person so positively influential, so charming, and so hard to really understand as Thelonious Monk. He seems at times the wise and all-knowing sage, and at others a man clueless and suffering from dementia-like symptoms. Is this the mark of true genius? Or the cohabitation of genius and disease in one person? Skimming over the biography of Monk, we are treated to a wealth of great photographs, stunning live performances, and clips of Monk at his more mundane. We are left with a taste, a whiff of the man, and we feel the struggles of black America and of innovative artists. It feels right to celebrate him and to try to understand.

It's really sweet, with great cinematography, and awesome acting. The whole thing is imbued with a love of photography, freedom, and love itself. It can be annoying how it's in English with forced accents, but another way of looking at it is that we are treated to master actors performing a marvelous Czech work as best as they can. There is an epic feel to it, it is a saga, from naivete to wisdom, from provinciality to worldliness and then back to the essential roots of life. It's about transformation. Binoche proves herself to be the It girl of the times. Olin astounds, and Day-Lewis grounds it all in his role as a playful bull being tamed by love and time.

The title comes from the English translation of Milos Kundera's Czech novel.